Lesson 3: Perspective: manage your mind

Lesson 3: Perspective: manage your mind

Now that you understand some basics, you'll begin your transformation into a self-affirming individual with a closer examination of the first element of the LifePACT model: perspective. We'll also touch on the second element of autonomy.


Managing your mind with good habits

Habits can be useful. When you operate habitually, you need to be only half-focusing on what you are doing because your habits are doing the other half of the thinking. When they yield good consequences, they are called good habits. Washing your hands before eating -- that's a good practice. But if you do it every two minutes, you have a bad habit.

Habits fall into two categories: Public habits are behaviors that are visible to others while private habits are habits of thought. Perspective is the LifePACT principle of managing stress by directing your private habits of thought and expectation. Your private thoughts play such a key part in day-to-day stresses that they are actually a better predictor of the amount of stress something will elicit than the actual stressful events themselves.


Making false readings

What this means is that much of the stress you experience is the direct result of losing perspective, or putting an irrational spin on what is happening in your life. If you are experiencing a lot of stress, chances are very good that you have cultivated private habits of thought that are making your life more hassled than it is has to be. Irrational patterns of thinking are so common that psychologists have come up with names for them all of us can recognize, including " overgeneralizing ," " catastrophizing ," "jumping to conclusions," and "pleasing others." We'll take a closer look at these bad habits in this lesson's assignment.
Imagine that your thoughts are like the dials on the dashboard of your car. If the temperature gauge registers that your car is overheating, you are going to pull over as soon as you can to have it checked. If the oil light goes on, you'll do something right away to ensure no serious damage is done. So you take it in and the mechanic tells you, "Your car is fine. I think that gauge needs replacing because it's giving you a false reading."


The same can be true of your mind. To gain perspective, you'll need to replace bad habits of thinking with more constructive habits. While going through the initial stages of this process, you may not have the presence of mind to stop an irrational thought before it has elicited in you a stressful reaction. You'll probably find yourself doing more cleaning up after the damage has been done rather than preventing it from happening.

But you will also become aware of the negative feelings and habits, and you can use this awareness as a signal to hunt out and replace destructive thoughts with more constructive thoughts. And, as your skill level with this technique grows, you'll be able to nip crooked thoughts in the bud. Let's now see how we can begin to master our private thoughts and habits.
Getting swept away by it all

Why do we allow our thoughts to sweep us away? What you see happening is the force of habit. Your thoughts are automatic. They pass through your mind so quickly that you may not even be aware that anything took place. You are aware, however, of the debris of negative feelings and behavior they leave in their wake. Think about a recent stressful event. Can you identify any bad habits that arose in your reaction?


Getting perspective

While unforeseen accidents are likely to happen, rather than panicking and making the situation worse, you can protect yourself with services that will help you get back on your feet as soon as possible

Mastering your thoughts

I recommend the following four steps for gaining control of a situation in which your private thoughts are likely to give you false readings:


Step #1: What am I telling myself?
As soon as you find yourself getting tense, stop and reflect on what your thoughts are telling you about the situation. The best way to do this is to take out a piece of paper and start jotting down all the ideas that come to mind.


Step #2: Is my self-talk helping?
Seriously consider whether the way you are sizing up a situation is really constructive or destructive. In other words, what are you gaining and losing in looking at things in your habitual way?


Step #3: What constructive thoughts can I use in place of my negative thoughts?
In this step, you are inviting other perspectives into your mind. It helps at this point to label your irrational thoughts. Are you making a mountain out of a molehill? Ask yourself if things are really all that bad, and answer truthfully. Jumping to conclusions? Offer yourself some alternative explanations for what has happened.


Step #4: How can I behave in a way that is consistent with these positive thoughts?
This final step is a powerful way to regain composure. In effect, act like you want to feel. If you want to feel calm and composed, act like a calm and composed person. Your body will be getting the message to maintain control from two sources: Your well-reasoned thoughts about the situation and the signals from your behavior that everything is under control.

Let's look at how you can apply these four steps to an actual stressful situation.


Applying these steps

Let's put ourselves in Gayle's shoes. She's been on a diet for several months. Lately it hasn't gone very well, and she has exceeded her calorie limit more than a couple of times. Gayle suspects that the culprit (trigger) is her fear that she will not meet her weight loss goal by the time she takes the vacation she has been planning for months. Gayle wants to turn off this mounting pressure, but doesn't know how.


What would do if you were Gayle?

Step #1: What am I telling myself? "If you don't start losing weight faster, you won't be thin enough for your trip to Hawaii and everything will be ruined."

Step #2: Is my self-talk helping? Definitely not. This pressure is making me feel anxious, which means I eat more. I'm seeing myself as a failure. And I'm getting irritable with my kids, which is unfair. Pressuring myself is making me gain weight, not lose it.

Step #3: What constructive thoughts can I use in place of my negative thoughts? I will allow myself to take my time. Even if I go to Hawaii at this weight, I'll still have fun. I'll start losing weight again anyway. I shouldn't catastrophize because it's not the end of the world.

Step #4: How can I now behave in a way that is consistent with these positive thoughts? You know what, since this self-punishment is very depressing and counterproductive, I'm going to take a nice long walk tonight. Plus, I'll do something for myself tomorrow by buying that nice sweater I've been eyeing.

Progressing through your thoughts in a logical manner is a very powerful technique, and you'll find that it plays a major role in managing stress. Because your thoughts help define your perspective (that is, your external actions and internal reactions), it is important to take note of inaccurate or unreasonable thoughts that may contribute to stress. Awareness of what you are saying to yourself and why is important in stopping the stress that is manufactured by irrational thoughts. Equally important is your skill in countering self-defeating thoughts with more constructive rebuttals.

These four steps will help you achieve this goal. So will the LifePACT model's second principle, autonomy, which we'll introduce next before discussing it in greater depth in Lesson 4.


Feeding yourself positive thoughts

Your irrational thoughts and their impact on your stress response are better controlled when they are caught early. Let them go unchecked and you will find yourself overwhelmed with intense feelings that are disproportionate to the event that you are responding to. You are what you think. Feed yourself positive thoughts and you will be a positive person

Introducing the second LifePACT principle

When you accept that problems and frustrations and disappointments are inevitable in this world, then life becomes more enjoyable. By practicing the second LifePACT principle, Autonomy, and replacing "Why is this happening to me?" with "What can I do about what is happening to me?" you will move from feeling victimized by life to taking charge of your life.
We saw earlier that perspective is developing constructive habits in the private behaviors of our thoughts. Autonomy is developing habits in the public behaviors of problem solving and action. The first step toward achieving autonomy is recognizing that there are only two ways in which life can be stressful: When you don't get what you want, and when you get what you don't want.


A quick example

Let's say that Bob's boss gave him a really great performance appraisal session last month. Bob was also led to expect a six-percent salary increase, and he had begun to plan on it. He opens up his salary statement expecting to see the increase but there is no increase. Obviously Bob didn't get what he wanted, but how does he react?

Depending on the spin or perspective Bob puts on this event, his private thoughts and feelings can range from mild disappointment to outrage. But in and of themselves, these thoughts and feelings will change nothing. The basic fact of the situation remains: He didn't get the raise. That's a problem. What should Bob do? Should he accept this reality without question? Should he appeal? Should he seek more information? What's Bob's next step?
When you start asking yourself these questions, you begin to invoke the principle of autonomy. In other words, you are on the way to becoming a problem solver.


Making autonomous decisions

Finding a suitable life partner, for instance, is an important developmental task. There are two correct decisions you can make: You can either choose the right person or you can not choose the wrong person. Likewise, there are two ways of making a mistake: You can choose the wrong person or you can not choose the right person.

I am oversimplifying things, of course. Relationship success is more than a single decision. The point is that every act of problem solving is basically choosing a course of action. There are things you can change even though you think you can't. There are things you can't change, even though you think you can. Competent problem solving is being able to distinguish between things that can be fixed and those things that are out of your control. Let's take a look at another example.

Jake arrives at work completely worn out. Last night, his next-door neighbor had a wild, drunken party at his house, keeping him up all night. The neighbor is a blustering, disagreeable man who has no consideration for others. When Jake called him at about 3:00 a.m. and asked him to be less noisy, the neighbor was abusive and insulting. Things quieted down later on, but when Jake finally got some rest, he overslept. Because of this, he skips breakfast and hurries to work.

As he is leaving the house he notices that someone has driven a car across one corner of his lawn and torn out several feet of his new hedge. Jake is sure it was either the neighbor or one of his drunken guests. Jake storms up to the neighbor's door and demands an explanation. The neighbor denies everything and then tells Jake to get off his property. When Jake gets to work, he is more than an hour late, and his nerves are so ragged he is actually shaking. Every conceivable thing has gone wrong.

To evaluate the quality of problem solving exhibited by Jake in this slice of his life, let's consider the problems he chose to deal with and those he chose not to deal with:
Jake chose to confront the neighbor at 3:00 am. Was that a good decision? We know the neighbor is a "blustering, disagreeable man who has no consideration for others." There's little surprise in the outcome of that confrontation. On the other hand, instead of taking steps to wake up on time, Jake oversleeps. What's more, he could have eaten, but he chose to skip breakfast. So, now, stressed about being late and, on an empty stomach, he makes another run at the neighbor.

Based on this example, Jake is not a competent problem solver.


Moving forward

As you now know, perspective is the LifePACT principle of managing stress by directing your private habits of thought and expectation. Much of the stress you experience is the direct result of losing perspective, or putting an irrational spin, on what is happening in your life. By following the four steps we discussed above, you'll be able to gain control of a situation in which your private thoughts are likely to give you false readings that only lead to unhealthy levels of stress.
We were also introduced to autonomy, which is developing habits in the public behaviors of problem solving and action. In the next lesson, we'll take a closer look at this LifePACT principle, including rehearsing to avoid negative reactions and recognizing then stopping procrastination